Marissa Mayer taps another woman for Yahoo ranks

Mayer hires Jacqueline Reses for EVP of people and development

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has made another hire, slowly but surely filling out the ranks of Yahoo executives. As one of the few women tasked to head a large Silicon Valley company, Mayer seems to have set her sights on putting women in high profile positions at the company.

Jacqueline Reses has been appointed executive vice president of people and development, it was announced Wednesday.

Reses, who previously worked at Goldman Sachs for seven years, before leading the U.S. media group at Apax Partners, will be starting on September 7, and will report directly to Mayer.

While at Apax Partners, Reses was heavily involved with investing in media and technology businesses, while also working in the company’s talent initiatives, including recruiting and training. Reses was named one of Crain’s New York Business’ “Most Influential Women,” and was one of Dealmaker magazine's “Dealmakers of the Year."

Her experience at Apax will come in handy as Reses, in her role as EVP of people and development, will in charge of acquiring talent and human resources.

“We are very excited to have Jackie join the Yahoo! team, leading our efforts around finding and retaining the best talent,” said Mayer in a statement.

“Jackie brings two decades of uniquely applicable operational experience around structuring organizations, programs, and strategies to build world-class teams in media and technology. Her tremendous energy will serve our employees well, and we’re looking forward to her fresh perspectives.”

Mayers other hires

Since Mayer took over as CEO of Yahoo on July 16, she has made four new hires, including Reses. Her first two hires were both from Google, where Mayer had been the first female engineer.

Mayer brought in former Google product marketing manager Andrew Schulte to be her new chief of staff. Mayer also hired Anne Espiritu, who ran consumer technology PR for Google, to handle corporate communications.

Savitt is the founder and CEO of social commerce website Lockerz. Prior to founding Lockerz in 2009, a website that now boasts more than 45 million unique users, Savitt had been executive VP and CMO of American Eagle and a senior executive at Amazon.

It was also rumored last month that Mayer was attempted to woo Katie Jacobs Stanton, Twitter’s VP of international strategy, for an unspecified position at Yahoo.

If there is a pattern emerging here it is that Mayer’s hires, with the exception of Schulte, are all women. And that should not be all that surprising.

A woman being put in Mayer’s position is still a rare thing. There are a few others that come to mind, such as Carly Fiorina, the former CEO and President of Hewlett-Packard; Meg Whitman who was the CEO of eBay from 1998 to 2008; Virginia Rometty, the first ever female CEO of IBM, appointed in 2011; and former Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz, who held the position from 2009 to 2011.

But Mayer is in a unique class, and she is taking the opportunity to use her position to give chances to women that they might not have otherwise had.

Given Yahoo’s spotty history with its recent CEOs (Mayer is the fourth CEO since 2007) it is good that she is making her mark right away.